Event recorders provided on various mobile vehicles such as planes and trains are generally designed to record data associated with an event during operation of the vehicle. The event recorders are typically designed and built to store that recorded data in a crash-hardened memory unit. A crash-hardened memory unit is configured to withstand the severe conditions that may occur during an accident. The memory units for these event recorders are contained within enclosures that allow the stored data to remain intact after accidents or other abnormal events. An important purpose of the event recorder is to provide a source of data that can be retrieved from the event recorder after an event such as an accident, and provide a detailed and accurate accounting of exactly what happened leading up to and during the event.
On-scene investigations after events involving mobile vehicles are time consuming and are not always accurate. Often, investigators must rely on witness statements and approximations to assess the events and the relative timing of the events leading up to the accident and to determine who is at fault. It is therefore difficult to guarantee the correctness of these assessments. Insurance companies use these assessments to determine who must pay for the damage after an accident has occurred. Incorrect assessments lead to money being spent unnecessarily by the insurance companies whose clients were not at fault.
A system capable of recording, reproducing and analyzing information pertaining to an accident is very valuable. Traffic delays caused while an accident is being investigated could be decreased since less investigation time at the scene of the accident would be required. Investigations would be more accurate since the system will provide precise data prior to, during, and after the accident. Additionally, insurance companies will benefit due to improved investigation assessments. Existing event recorders often are capable of recording only specific types of data such as limited amounts of video and/or audio data, or data provided by sensors that measure vehicle operating characteristics. During accident reconstruction, the various types of data must be synchronized after the fact by stitching together the different types of data relative to different time sources associated with each of the different types of data. This process requires complex software and may lead to inaccuracies in the perceived relative timing of different recorded data.
One attempt to record video information at each signaling device positioned along a train track is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,978,718 of Kull that issued on Nov. 2, 1999 (the '718 patent). The '718 patent provides a rail vision system employed to visually read signal aspect information from each signaling device. The '718 patent also warns a train operator of restrictive signal aspects and, if the train operator fails to acknowledge the warning, imposes a brake application.
Although the system of the '718 patent may improve safety and aid in investigations regarding the operation of a locomotive, it may be less than optimal. In particular, the disclosed system of the '718 patent does not provide a system for recording multiple types of data to a crash-hardened memory. Moreover, the '718 patent also does not provide a system for associating a universal time stamp from a single time source with all of the different types of data that are being written to the crash-hardened memory in order to facilitate accurate synchronization of the data for event reconstruction.
The system and method of the present disclosure solves one or more problems set forth above and/or other problems in the art.